Residential longevity garners clients

Previously, we examined the role of net worth, education and civic engagement in a real estate agent’s power base influencing their real estate transactions. While tangible factors and essential activities such as these are easily recognized, an evolving real estate agent also takes advantage of more coincidental benefits – such as the influence of their familial ties built up over time in their community. These influential bonds are also known as residential longevity.

An agent or broker uses their familial ties to their advantage by capitalizing on local recognition of their familial name. For an agent to benefit from the public’s recognition of their family’s roots in the community, the agent needs to determine how best to leverage the community’s awareness of their familial ties.

Respect, consistency and professional bonds are attainable by an agent’s acumen in the use of their family name to expand their business. Association with a well-known name synonymous with respectability and success in a community generates an almost automatic esteem and affinity for the agent who in turn benefits from the consensus. Agents who wield long-standing family associations elevate themselves above agents lacking local ties or legacies.

The agent’s personal familial ties

To begin using familial ties to benefit their business, an agent first needs to ask themselves these questions:

Is their family name well-recognized in their community?

If not, is there a location where their family name is well-known?

What is the first thing people think of when they hear the agent’s name?

The agent’s goal of building upon their family’s residential longevity is to place the agent first and foremost in a potential client’s mind when they hear the agent’s name. In contrast, when the agent’s name is not well-known in their own community, they are less likely to be considered by potential clients in need of real estate services.

An agent has a good chance of using their name as a springboard when they reside and work in a location where their family presence is strong. Name recognition attaches to an agent when they set roots in a community – whether it’s built on their family’s existing connections to the community or the agent decides to start fresh and separately establish their own name recognition.

An agent or broker with a sturdy legacy in a community establishes a reputation, deserved or not, of belonging and familiarity to the community. Reputation encourages clients to work with them out of an affinity bias.

An affinity bias manifests in a variety of forms, depending on how the agent takes advantage of their name recognition. The agent may choose to start marketing their name with a particular niche or expertise in demand by those most likely to be familiar with the agent’s name. An agent can also seek out brokerage companies with strong familial resonance in the community to raise their own esteem in that locale. The farther the broker’s name reaches, the greater weight the name will carry on the agent’s resume and client contact list.

Familial ties as client connections

Another way agents may use familial ties to benefit their real estate business is to establish connections with clients to whom family is an obvious priority. These households include:

first-time homebuyers looking to start their own family;

families with children seeking more space; and

elder couples wanting to live near their extended family.

A client looking for a suitable home for their family willingly trusts an agent with a well-known, longstanding family reputation — someone like them. Thus, the agent leverages this reputation and experience to entice more family-oriented clients their way. The same logic applies for attracting real estate investors as clients. Longtime members of the community know about the agent’s family status and the stability of the family name, which attracts them to the agent when in need of real estate services.

More clients, of course, means the number of transactions handled by the agent increases and in turn brings about a rise in their earnings. The agent developing these discretionary earnings can then choose whether to save their income or reinvest it in assets, education or the enlargement of their own business.

The agent may also leverage the dominance of their name recognition into:

higher fee splits when employed by a broker;

better positions at a brokerage company; or

starting or expanding their own brokerage.

Agents who meticulously cultivate their name recognition established by their family’s residential longevity in the community will attract more brokerage business. Thus, the agent develops more opportunities to increase their earnings and wealth, and is able to choose the brokerage activity best situated to most benefit them.

Regardless of how an agent chooses to use their familial ties, the benefits of a family’s longevity in a community are plentiful. An agent’s aim is for clients to think of their name when they think real estate – a goal achieved in part by the influence of long-standing local ties which ultimately create a comfort zone for clients to readily use the agent’s services.

Look for the final article in this series examining the influence of an agent’s personal achievements on their real estate business. To read part three of this article, see: Extend your reach through civic engagement

Featured Comment

Zestimates are great conversation starters with sellers and buyers. Zillow has done more for our bottom line than NAR ever has or will. Don’t fight the current of the river, learn to run with it. Disruption is inevitable in any industry that is fragmented or inefficient. Granted, it does feel like armchair experts and platforms are plentiful in real estate these days, but when the tide rolls out we will see the value proposition of the truest professionals in this industry shine once again.